One slicerdicer and SIX killer robots is bad enough. The slicerdicer can only be affected (really) with energy weapons and grenades. The LAWs don't work. The slicerdicer can attack an adjacent target, jump halfway across the screen, and then execute a second attack on whoever it landed next to. The attack robots must have about 16 APs because they can move like six squares and still make TWO melee attacks in the same turn. If the two with automatic weapons get shot at with a heavy weapon they get a FREE counterattack. And then to top it off Rose and Angela keep going Lose Control and Rose dishes out nearly as much Friendly Fire damage -- no, make that MORE than she inflicts on the robots. But the real killer is just how often my 90%+ CTHs keep missing. A couple of them missed the closer robot to inflict Friendly Fire on a party member on the other side.

It's like the software is bending over to make sure that the party doesn't just lose, but gets seriously hammered into the ground. There's like an incredibly thin possibility of winning, but the survivors will be dragging around with less than 5 hit points each while at least half the party will be Unconscious/dead.

This is another one of those missions which Vargas has no business giving to a party that isn't potent enough to have at least a 50-50 chance of winning.

Interestingly enough, it seems there's an "exploit" that if you spread your guys out within the fenced area of the radio tower the Slicer dicer can't jump near you, I'm guessing because it takes up a large amount of squares (instead of just one) and it needs enough room to land. I was able to exploit this by running my melee and SMG guys into the area behind the fence near the tower and attacking the Killers and the melee robots (can't remember what they were called) and the Slicer dicer boss just sat there outside the fence not doing anything, so once I killed the small robots I moved onto the Slicer dicer. I guess Slicer dicers just can't move properly in enclosed areas.

If someone from InXile reads this though, I'd recommend perhaps making it so the Slicer dicer AI can jump onto a bunch of squares which are occupied by units, but they just knock them aside so they get pushed out into a free square when it lands, as it currently stands it seems they can jump right in front of your guys, but not actually on top of them.

You can also dmg the slicerdicer with blunt weapons and sniper rifles from titans valley, even though dmg is reduced. I would also not consider the slicerdicer to be the problem here, but the killers. 6 is rough indeed. I think i only had 3 or 4 when i did it. I was also able to get them down one after another with mostly only 1 of them in range when i approached from the south. Bursting them down with ARs asap works best on them.

I followed Crosmando's advice and deployed inside the fence to face off with five robots there. But the three machinegun robots (2 inside, 1 outside) STILL manage to Swiss cheese everyone. It doesn't help that I have seen the machinegunners _cleanly_ shoot through intervening clawer robots that my guys are crouched behind. Two bursts from one robot does an AVERAGE of 120 hit points damage. How is any party member supposed to hold up against that , along with all the other s*** being thrown at them? It really sucks, when my comparative heavy weapon, a BAR, does only 16 hit points in the ONE burst that the gunner can manage with his 7 APs.

Also, for some reason, only ONE shooter in the party is being allowed to participate in that opening supposedly coordinated team volley. That has to be a grenade, just to get 24-35 hit points on one of the killer robots.

I could - in the newest build and that before - attack the small ones from the entrace. The slicer only attacked once the smaller robots were all down. And I took those out with "normal" weapon - no problem here. The slicer though always shredded through my party like a hot knife through butter, while taking nearly no damage.

Its all about the killers. What really helped me is to engage into combat w/out killers in range, then keep your assault rifle wielders on burst mode and ambushing. This way you have a solid chance to kill them when they approach you and before they can fire.

Grenades doing more damage than a LAW to soft targets makes sense. But the violent effects of a rocket propelled shaped charge against hard targets such as tanks (and I'd assume, a gigantic robot) are the reason they were invented. It's a 7 ft long shaft of explosion. Frag grenades would probably be ineffective if sniper rifles are, I'm sure this isn't the final balance pass for damage and armor.

One other thing that would help with difficult battles such as this is separate opening targets for separate team members. If you could setup your characters depending on skills and then have that nice initial chunk of damage focused properly (rather than right now where everyone squad fires the one target), it could be extremely useful and another deep tactical aspect. That too will change with the addition of stealth I'm guessing.

Honestly, while I'll admit that this was one of the tougher fights I faced, I've never had any significant trouble with it. When I ran into the robots at the radio tower, my team consisted of six in total (since Angela had left): One Ranger with Handaxe, One Ranger with M401 Scoped Rifle / .45 Revolver, One Ranger with SAW / Explosives, One Ranger with G3 Assault Rifle, Takayuki with Scythe, and Vipula with Laser Repeater. Everyone was kitted out with either Leather Jackets or Tactical Vests.

I generally consider the Slicerdicer to be a low-priority target, because while it soaks a lot of damage it inflicts relatively low damage (unlike in earlier versions of the beta where its energy attack did 30+ damage to multiple targets). Instead, I prioritize the Killers, since their energy attacks do very high damage, followed by the Roboclawers who can theoretically inflict serious damage in close combat (not sure, since I never actually let one get close enough to attack me).

Round one, I open combat with a grenade. You can catch two killers with an opening shot, since they're relatively close together. Might be able to catch more with a LAW or RPG-7, since it has a wider radius, but I didn't try that. Then, I was able to quickly dispatch those two damaged Killers plus one undamaged one with my assault rifle, sniper rifle, and .45 revolver (which is actually very effective against robots), as well as a second grenade. Vipula is slow enough that she usually doesn't even get to go during the initial exchange. Since my blade-wielding ranger and Takayuki can only do minimal damage to the robots, I use them as barricades (140 or so MAXCON each, 4 Armor from Tactical Vests).

From there, it's just a matter of focusing my fire. Each time my rangers go, I'm able to take out two or three more robots. If one of my meat shields gets below 50% health, I have them pop some Extra Strength Pain Pills. Once all the little robots are mopped up (about three or four full combat revolutions, usually), I focus fire on the Slicerdicer, which is more of a nuisance than anything else. I make sure to scatter my rangers all over the place, so it can only catch one or two of them with its area attacks, but it generally goes down after two or three more revolutions of combined fire.

Healing afterwards has never been a problem, because the battle tends to give so much XP that you're ready to level up afterwards. Leveling up now provides free healing.

EDIT - If for some reason you're NOT ready to level up after this fight, or if they remove the "heal on level-up" feature in the future, the Radio Tower is very close to the Ranger Citadel. You just have to pop over there for some free healing.

I _finally_ beat the robots by managing to take out the two inside killer robots in the first two rounds. [Multiple grenades CAN be thrown on the initial attack. Conversely, only ONE firearm can be fired in the initial attack.] That third killer robot was still deadly, shooting through the fence AND any intervening claw robots. Also blows right through any boxes used as cover with just one round in a burst.

The slicerdicer, once all the other robots were dead, remained stationery until it "only" had less than 100 hit points. Then it had no problem jumping into the fenced in area. By then the ONLY weapons I had that did _any_ damage were two energy weapons (@9 points damage per hit) and a hunting rifle (2-3 points damage per). While I was slowly nibbling it down, it was literally slicing and dicing. When it finally blew, I had two Unconscious and the remaining four characters had single-digit hit points. No more grenades. No more First Aid packs. No more Pain Relievers. I had plenty of energy packs and 30-06 for the sniper, only 3 rounds of 7.62, and the 5.56 users were each down to less than 15 rounds each. Plus almost nothing in the way of loot from the robot carcasses.

Outdoorsman gave me a clear path to Ranger Citadel (thank God) and free healing, but hardly any buying power to replenish ammo and meds. So when I do leave HQ, everyone will be healthy, but very ..... fragile.

Again, I've used melee as much as possible this play thru, so when I do get to situations like the robots I have tons of ammo.
I'm sure melee will be nerfed or firearms improved simply because at this point melee is definitely the way to go since firearms are pretty lame (and hard/expensive to keep fed).

Suhiir wrote:I'm sure melee will be nerfed or firearms improved simply because at this point melee is definitely the way to go since firearms are pretty lame (and hard/expensive to keep fed).

Odd, isn't it? Post-Apocalypse the preferred combat mode is melee, NOT because of a shortage of ammo in the world, but because melee inflicts more damage. And here I've always held that, "It's better to kill them way over there, because if you let them get up close and personal, you WILL take damage that you wouldn't otherwise."

Try battles with robots with no armor on. Armor in the game only gives the ability to reduce damage based on the enemies weapons. If an enemy can pen your armor, it doesn't do extra damage, it just does the normal damage it can do. So if the enemy has a weapon that can pen 5 armor and you have 4 armor, it does full damage. If you have no armor on, its still the same damage.

Taking off your armor vs energy using robots like the killers will usually help your fights since the energy weapons used against you aren't multiplied if you have conductive/heavy armor on. So when fighting robots, take off your armor which will actually lower the damage they do against you. Probably not the physical ones like the slicers and such, but they might bypass your armor anyway depending on their pen values.